Madison May Day had a couple thousand people, with speeches from the smaller, more radical groups at a park that then started marching to the capitol, where speeches from the mainstream unions, etc happened.

Police across Germany are preparing for the traditional May Day marches on Sunday, with some clashes already reported in Hamburg on Saturday evening.
Police in the northern city arrested 10 leftist vandals on Saturday, saying that one car belonging to the German military was burned during the demonstration. Other minor acts of vandalism were also mentioned.
"A car and waste containers were set on fire. Demonstrators threw stones and paint bombs at the police which used water cannon" to disperse the crowd, a Hamburg police spokesman told the AFP news agency.
In Berlin, the other traditional German home of leftist May Day marches, the situation was relatively quiet overnight. Roughly 1,500 people staged a demonstration in the Prenzlauer Berg district, but the police described it as largely peaceful...
The German capital will have approximately 6,000 officers from across the country on duty as thousands of protesters are expected to rally on Sunday.
A spokesman for the police said they plan to keep their distance if the protests remain peaceful, but will crack down on displays of violence.
Protesting on May 1 has become something of a tradition in Berlin over the past 30 years, and this year's planned demonstrations are against capitalism and the gentrification process that is morphing parts of the shabby-chic German capital.
Meanwhile, in the northern city of Bremen around 4,000 people demonstrated against an extremist right-wing rally on Saturday, attended by about 200 neo-Nazis. 3,000 police officers monitored the event.

Anybody know what happened yesterday? I know that in the past in Berlin, the autonomists often have rather ritualised routine clashes with the cops which don't really develop opposition over time, but maybe some things outside this milieu happened...?

Fairly low key anarchist presence, around 100-150 on a march of around 5,000. The public assembly was small and was difficult to hear but the speakers were all excellent - and shows what dynamic people we have in our movement. Maybe next year there could be a greater run up, perhaps more collective stake in the process ( this year was organised by two people ).

Any pics from Clerkenwell Green 'assembly' and the red n' black contingent yet. Congrats to the organisers - I think it went pretty well. Prob a dozen speakers took the mic' and addressed a sizable audience, attracting close scrutiny from the police.

Workers from the Real Estate Tax Authority Employees' Union and the Public Transport Authority Workers' Union (recently established independent associations) demand a minimum wage, and express their support for the January 25 Revolution.

Fairly low key anarchist presence, around 100-150 on a march of around 5,000. The public assembly was small and was difficult to hear but the speakers were all excellent - and shows what dynamic people we have in our movement. Maybe next year there could be a greater run up, perhaps more collective stake in the process ( this year was organised by two people ).

Sorry to hear that, there's probably a number of reasons for it but with hopefully a larger movement next year should be a lot bigger. I'm sure we'll be organising something in London as our conference won't be clashing in future!

We didn't do a wider mobilisation for it, or try to define the meaning of mayday in the present so it effect we didn't really try as much as we should. But yeah, Mayday is an important day for anarchists in particular and we could make it a lot more even if we just commit to Clerkenwell Green every year.

The demonstration in central Tunis was called by Left parties and associations, while the trade union leadership from the UGTT organised a separate rally in the outskirts of the city, 5km away from the centre.

This last initiative was consciously organised by UGTT bureaucrats to avoid a clash with their most militant workers. But this attempt did not prevent Abdessalem Jrad (general secretary of the UGTT) and other ... leaders from being booed by people present at the rally.

...

Demonstrators in central Tunis were mostly radical young people, and were joined by a large and very militant contingent of the Union des Diplômés Chômeurs (UDC - Union of Unemployed Graduates)...

My mate from Lisbon told me that they fired on people with rubber bullets in the Mayday protest there.

Are you sure it was “Lisbon”? Or did he talk of “Setúbal“. The manifestation in that town 50 km south of the capital –endorsed by local anarchist group– was attacked by the police. They apparently did not only use rubber bullets and batons to disperse the manifestation, but fired at least 4 rounds of live ammunition as “warning shots“. I'd say that this incredible brutal attack is a clear evidence of how nervous the bankrupt Portuguese goverment is towards anti-austerity protests. It was yesterday when the Portuguese government agreed to at an 80 billion Euro “rescue shield“ guaranteed by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in order to prevent a complete national bankrupt.

Report from Barcelona, from a point of view sympathetic to black bloc tactics. For other views (in Spanish) there's this alasbarricadas thread. Smashing up cars for example didn't go down too well with others on the demo. There are claims on that thread that undercover police were responsible, but I've no idea if this is true or not.

Edit: Also possibly of interest, there are references in the report to 'the CNT(s)' and 'the two different CNT factions'. These are the official CNT Catalunya and the one that was expelled in a split in the 1980s, both of which produce their own version of Solidaridad Obrera. This year the CNT May Day events were organised jointly by both organisations.

I was in the Barcelona demo, and as Mark has said, there were some strange things. Lots of infiltrated cops arresting people, breaking things and provoking the riot gear police, who charged about four times and were prosecuting people two hours after the demo ended, remembering times of Franco. It was the first demo ever that went through the richest neighbourhoods of our city, so the police had in mind to prevent any kind of damage in the areas and had the excuse of charging when the provocateurs started fun. There were about 5.000 people, and it was one of the more agressive demos that I've been, it remembered me the alternative one in the 29th september general strike, apart from the one of the bureaucratized unions of UGT and CCOO. All the banks near the demo were attacked and many barricades were built.

Other things that I've to point out is that Spain is absolutely near some months of real struggle, specially the city of Barcelona, that have shown many interesting struggles in the last months (Occupation of a building in the central square of the city for the 29th september general strike, demos against the cuts, workers organizing in their places as the doctors and nurses, students more and more organized AGAIN since the implantation of the Bolonia proces...). It is for that reason that the chief of the cops in Catalonia, Felip Puig, has recently said that he will ban demos organizated by "groups with uncivil precedents"...

Following the arrival and persecution of the Tunisian migrants, Parisian activists – notably the Front de libération populaire tunisien (FLPT) Coordination des Intermittents et Precairs (CIP) and Knowledge Liberation Front (KLF) – began organizing in order to find safe havens and supply basic needs (food, shelter and medicines) for the new arrivals. Representatives from leftwing parties and unions also began concerning themselves with the urgent situation.

However, after several grassroots meetings, the Tunisian community made clear that they did not want any (colonialist) charity from French organizations but rather a stable and safe place where they could exercise their right to self-organize. They vehemently insisted against any political manipulation of their situation by the institutional left.

A last minute decision to participate in the traditional demonstration for the 1st of May was made in order to bring attention to their situation and to gather the Parisian community of Tunisian together.

The demonstration was a huge success. Hundreds of Tunisian migrants created the most lively and politically decisive blocks of the otherwise traditional march. The block was lead by a huge white banner that read “No Police Nor Charity: A place to organize” signed by “The Tunisians from Lampedusa to Paris”. Carrying ad hoc placards and signs that read “Ben Alì, Murabak, Sarkozy…” and “We’ve come to help you do the same” the message was clear: the Maghreb wind of radical democratic change has arrived in Europe.

Despite continuing police repression and the attempts of the institutional left to cooptate the burgeoning movement, on the night of May 1st well over 200 migrants and activists (now officially organized as the Collective of Tunisians from Lampedusa) occupied a building in the 19th arrondissement of Paris. Although the police arrived almost immediately at the scene and attempted to enter the building and arrest the occupants, an overnight sit-in outside and physical resistance inside has so far managed to prevail over any eviction.

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